Other than that, I don't have a thing that wasn't in the uniforms' reports.'
'I struck out too, but I'm not surprised. You get a development like The Meadows, you get houses with land. They're not leaning over each other. less chance anyone will see what's going on at the neighbor's. And with heat like this, everyone's either inside with the air-conditioning on or out at their country club.'
'So what do we do now?'
'Head back in.'
'You get a hit on a florist truck?' Grimsbo asked, when he had the car started.
'There was a cable TV repairman at the Osgoods', but no florist.'
'Yeah, I got the TV guy too. What do you think of Waters?'
'I don't think anything, Frank. You seen him?'
Grimsbo shook his head.
'Our killer's got to be high IQ, right? Waters is a zero. Skinny, pimple-faced kid. He's got this little wisp of a beard. If he's not retarded, he's not far from it.
Dropped out of school in the tenth grade. He was eighteen. Worked as a gas station attendant and a box boy at Safeway. He lost that job when he was arrested for jacking off outside the window of a sixteen-year-old neighbor girl. The girl's father beat the crap out of him.'
'He sounds pretty pathetic,' Grimsbo observed.
'The guy's got no life. He lives with his mother.
She's in her late sixties and in poor health. I followed him for a few days. He's a robot. Every day it's the same routine. He leaves work and walks to the One Way Inn, this bar that's halfway to his house. Orders two beers, nurses 'em, doesn't say a word to anyone but the bartender.
Forty-five minutes after he goes in, he leaves, walks straight home and spends the evening watching TV with his mother. I talked to his boss and his neighbors. If he's got any friends, no one knows who they are. He's held this delivery boy job with Evergreen Florists longer than any of his other jobs.'
'You writing him off?'
'He's a weeny-waver. A little twisted, sure, but I don't make him for our killer. He's not smart enough to be our boy. We don't have anything with Waters.'
'We don't have anything, period.'
Glen Michaels walked into the task force office just as Grimsbo and Turner were finishing the reports on their interviews in The Meadows.
'Whatcha got?' Grimsbo asked. He had shucked his jacket and parked himself next to a small fan.
'Nothing at all,' Michaels said. 'It's like the guy was never there. I just finished all the lab work. Every print matches up to the victims, Lake or one of the neighbors.
There's nothing to do a DNA test on. No unusual hairs, no fibers, no semen. This is one smart cookie, gentlemen.'
'You think he knows police procedure?' Turner asked.
'I have to believe it. I've never seen so many clean crime scenes.'
'Anyway,' Michaels said, heading for the door, 'I'm out of here. This heat is boiling my blood.'
Turner turned to Grimsbo. 'This perp is starting to piss me off.
Nobody's that good. He leaves no prints, no hairs, no one sees him.
Christ, we've got a development full of people and no one reports an unusual occurrence.
No strangers lurking around, not a single odd car. How does he get in and out?'
Grimsbo didn't answer. He was frowning. He levered himself out of his chair and walked over to the cabinet where they kept the master file on the case.
'What's up?' Turner asked.
'just something… Yeah, here it is.'
Grimsbo pulled a report out of the file and showed it to Turner. It was the one-page report of the dispatcher who had taken the 911 call from Peter Lake.
'You see it?' Grimsbo asked.
Turner read the report a few times and shook his head.
'The time,' Grimsbo said. 'Lake called in the 911 at eight-fifteen.'
'Yeah? so?'
'Solomon said he saw Lake driving by at seven-twenty. He was certain he'd just heard the sports scores.
CNN gives them at twenty after.'
'And the bodies were in the hall,' Turner said, suddenly catching on.
'How long does it take to park the car, open the door? Let's give Lake the benefit of the doubt and assume Solomon is a little off. He's still gonna be inside by seven-thirty.'
'Shit,' Turner said softly.
'Am I right, Wayne?' Grimsbo asked.
'I don't know, Frank. If it was your wife and kid I mean, you'd be in shock.'
'Sure, the guy's knocked out. He said he sat down on the stairs for a while. You know, gathering himself. But for forty-five minutes?
Something doesn't wash. I think he spent the time cleaning up the crime scene.'
'What's the motive? Jesus, Frank, you saw her face.
Why would he do that to his own wife?'
'You know why. She knew something, she found something, and she made the mistake of telling Lake.
Think about it, Wayne. If Lake killed them it would explain the absence of clues at the crime scene. There wouldn't be any strange cars in the neighborhood or prints that didn't match the Lakes or the neighbors.
'I don't know.'
'Yes you do. He killed that little girl. His own little girl.'
'Christ, Frank, Lake's a successful lawyer. His wife was beautiful.'
'You heard Klien. The guy we're looking for is a monster, but no one's gonna see that. He's smooth, handsome, the type of guy these women would let in their house without a second thought. it could be a successful lawyer with a beautiful wife. It could be anyone who isn't wired right and is working in some psycho world of his own where this all makes sense.'
Turner paced around the room while Grimsbo waited (quietly. Finally Turner sat down and picked up a picture of Melody Lake.
'We aren't going to do anything stupid, Frank. If Lake is our killer, he is one devious motherfucker. one hint that we're on to him and he'll figure a way to cover this up.'
'so, what's the next step? We can't bring him in and sweat him and we know there's nothing connecting Lake to the other crime scenes.'
'These women weren't picked at random. If he's the killer, they've — all got to be connected to Lake somehow.
We have to reinterview the husbands, go back over the reports and recheck our lists with Lake in mind. If we're right, there's going to be something there.'
The two men sat silently for a moment, figuring the angles.
'None of this goes in a report,' Turner said. 'Lake could stumble across it when he's here.'
'Right,' Grimsbo answered. 'I'd better take Solomon's interview with me.'
'When do we tell Nancy and the chief?'
'When we have something solid. Lake's very smart and he's got political connections. If he's the one, I don't want him beating this, I want him nailed.'
Nancy Gordon was deep in a dreamless sleep when the phone rang. She jerked up in bed, flailing for a moment, before she realized what was happening. The phone rang again before she found it in the dark.
'Detective Gordon?' the man on the phone asked.
'Speaking,' Nancy said, as she tried to orient herself.
'This is Jeff Spears. I'm a patrolman. Fifteen minutes ago we received a complaint about a man sitting in a car on the corner of Bethesda and Champagne. Seems he's been parked there for three successive nights. One of the neighbors got worried.
